Altos de Medrano, Altos las Hormigas Malbec 2002 and Malbec Riserva 2002

I opened a bottle of the 2002 Riserva last night. Ws had it at 92 points. I have to agree with Emilio. A lot of complexity for the money (it's currently on sale for $18.99 here ->I'm going to get more).

medium bodied, lots of structure, lots of complexity. Only decanted for about 10 minutes, it evolved in the glass and showed a lot of facets over an hour or so. Picked up dark fruits, spices, mineral, pepper, figs, etc. To me, it had the structure and clean fruit style of classic old world wines. It actually had an elegance (sorry) similar to a left banker Bordeaux. For my tastes, this was not a "fruit bomb" like a lot of cal cabs or even some "modern" St. Emilions (which I enjoy). For that reason, also agree with Emilio on his time frame. This is a step up from a lot of the $10 -$20 South American reds I've been buying, and is easily the equivalent of (or maybe half a notch higher) than Casa Lapostolles's Cuvee Alexandra reds.

Because of the complexity and the quickly changing nature in the glass which showed so many facets, I'd go with the 92 pts. which WS gave this wine, and it may even go higher in a couple of years. ( I'm actually not too comfortable at assigning points, but I typically don't see this type of "changing complexity" in wines until about the 92-93 point range as assigned by the experts)

2002 Altos las Hormigas reserva malbec

I bought (at Harvey Nichols) and tasted this wine in London. Got it for only one pound more than the regular bottling, about 8 pounds or USD$14 as I recall. While I also liked it I would not score it as highly as my esteemed posting colleagues above.

It was brambly with blueberries and plums and BBQ smoke and maybe a little banana on the finish. Medium full bodied. It was quite smooth and sophisticated for such a cheap wine, and would match with a wide variety of foods I think.

I score it 89 points.